Explanation: This
newly released digital portrait of our planet
is reminiscent of the
Apollo-era pictures of the "big blue marble"
Earth
from space.
To
create it,
researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center's
Laboratory for Atmospheres combined data
from a
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite
(GOES),
the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor
(SeaWiFS), and the
Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites
(POES) with a
USGS
elevation model of Earth's
topography.
Stunningly
detailed, the planet's western hemisphere is
cast so that heavy vegetation is green and sparse vegetation is yellow,
while the heights of mountains and depths of valleys
have been exaggerated by 50 times to make
vertical relief visible.
Hurricane
Linda is the dramatic storm off North America's west coast.
And what about the Moon?
The lunar image was reconstructed from GOES data and
artistically rescaled for this
visualization.